I am very familiar with plants, more so in certain areas.

There are many plants that you can find across the nation. Look especially into introduced species (aka weeds).

Some of the more common and widespread edible species include: dandelion, burdock, thistle, purslane, plantain, cattail, pine, oak, grasses (watch out for ergo!), chicory, shepherd's purse, nettles, roses, mallows, and watercress (boil if eating submerged parts to kill water-nasties). I'm sure some of these have already been mentioned. Fiddleheads and horsetails are known to be toxic in quantity.

Be aware that many introduced plants are most commonly found on disturbed sites, and might have pesticide sprays or exhaust grime on them. Wash them.
Also, a few common edible plants are nitrate and/or selenium accumulators. Research this.
Learn the poisonous plants before you learn the edible ones, many edibles have poisonous look-alikes, and remember that with some plants and more often fungi, even a small amount can kill, so never experiment with them. "There are no old and bold mycologists."

I like it, Blast!

I would say not to get too obsessed over the poisonous plants.

I think if you are familiar with 5 good edible plants for each season where you are, then you stand a good chance of getting a meal no matter what else happens.

By familiar I mean you actually know the plant, have gathered it and tried it instead of just identified it once from a guide book.

I found an EXCELLENT book on edible wild plants; its called Foraging in New England. I dont know if they make others regionally, but I take this with me all the time on hikes. Excellent color plates, and it lists by environment (woods, beach, swamp, etc)

Here in the West, we have two plants called Camas, the blue one and the white one. The tubers of the blue one are edible, the white one is deadly -- one tuber and you're dead. They are actually two different species, but the tubers look similar.

While you're doing your research, find out if there are lookalikes that are toxic.

Sue

A couple of credits and comments.
Blast's site on plants is quite good and he has some pretty good links on it. It is well worth taking a look at.

Field guides like Blast's are good to help you start identifying plants.
You still need to make sure you have it right. Finding people with personal experience is getting harder all the time.
Many people today wouldn't be able to identify the food they eat every day if you took them out and stood them in a field of it. (and I am talking about common food plants not exotics)
They would be able to starve in the middle of plenty.


Susan is right and Death Camas is a good example.


There are actually 2 varieties of White Camas with the western one being far more deadly.
But once you know them they are really not hard to tell apart from Camas bulbs.
(and you need to know real camas well enough to know that whatever else you might dig up is not it and not to be gathered)

If you are not careful or are guessing you are more likely to be killed by different varieties of plants we commonly use as food. There are lots of deadly plants in the carrot, bean and pea families as well.

Then there are plants that need to be ripe, ones that can not be ripe, and the ones that need to be specially processed or else they are poison too.

Sometimes even a different part of a regular food plant, or improperly stored food plants can kill.
Potato leaves and stems are deadly and a potato which has gotten enough sunlight to turn green becomes poison.

Some plants are even poison to touch!

You need to be familiar with the plant before gathering a mess of it and eating it.

However there are a lot of good plants that have no poisonous times of the year, poisonous parts or dangerous lookalikes.
So start with some of the safer ones to try.
Don't be too discouraged by some of them.

I see guidebooks that claim some plants can taste delicious if you boil them in a hundred changes of water, but the truth is cattail roots still taste like muddy swamp muck and dandelion greens are still bitter.

One of my favorites is an introduced weed called Lamb's Quarters (Chenopodium alba) because it is so simple. Just use it like spinach.
It grows anywhere there has been any sort of farming and it produces greens all year.
(The seeds can be gathered and ground in enough quantity to be useful as a grain, but that is a bit fiddly for me to bother with.)
It comes up as a weed in most gardens and the young stems and leaves make an excellent green (even better than spinach to me, it is not as gritty).


Please keep the comments coming, I am learning a bit in this thread.

One thing that we have to be careful of around the northeast, is otherwise edible plants, particularly low to the ground, or edible roots being contaminated by proximity to poison ivy. Sometimes, you don't see the poison ivy plant leaves, but, the roots can be running around, and you do one of two things, get it on your hands, or worse, eat something that has some of the oil on it, and your mouth and throat start to swell. Not good.

Last year, we had winter and spring conditions that resulted in a bumper crop of poison ivy.

If learning to identify the poisonous ones seems potentially obsessive to you, other than to wish good luck upon you in your wild culinary adventures, I suggest that you consider learning to recognize plants by family. That way you can take advantage of the fact that many families of plants contain zero or very few poisonous or dangerous species. Look into Asteraceae, Malvaceae, Pinaceae, Fagaceae, Graminaceae, Rosaceae, and others. Two books I recommend for learning about this as a general rule (with plants, there is never such a thing as too much info, especially not when toxicity is a potential issue; one never knows until one knows; knowledge of poisonous plants is always better sooner than too late) are: Christopher Nyerges' Guide to Wild Foods and Useful Plants, and Botany in a Day: Thomas J. Elpel's Herbal Field Guide to Plant Families; although I happen to disagree with the idea that the Cactaceae is a safe family.

On the other hand, as a general rule, there are families to avoid. These might include: Solanaceae, Anacardiaceae, Apiaceae (Umbelliferaceae), and others.

I myself will never use the Universal Edibility Test to make up for not knowing for sure concerning edibility, but if you think you might, let me suggest that it be thought of as an adjunct to other knowledge. That is to say that even though you have not identified the plant in question positively to species, you have positively ruled out that it is not poisonous (it could be an oxalic [eat sparingly] or irritating species) and/or that it is not in a risky family. This and because there are edible plants and poisonous plants that look nearly identical, is why knowing ALL the poisonous plants in whatever area you are in is of great benefit.

The only time I personally would ever use the Universal Edibility Test, is when I already know the plant is edible, but I have never tried it before and I want to check for any unpleasant or allergic reaction I might have to it. Not that I am allergic to anything, but with new plants, one never knows.

Excuse me, but I am not suggesting any "wild culinary adventures" and in fact am recommending the exact opposite.
Knowing well what you are picking and picking that plant is a very sensible approach.
If you don't know what you are picking don't eat it.

On the other hand your Gee, I don't know what it is, so I will eat it anyhow! advice, to simply rely upon the plant family, with no regard to similarities to totally unrelated poisonous species, strikes me as a form of Russian Roulette.
Your recomended families even include poison species. Notably in the Asteraceae, and the Fagaceae.


However, after you got past being offensive you did follow with a little bit of decent advice.

There are no universal edibility tests is very true.
Many very dangerous plants taste fine.
The fact that most poisonous plants are horrible tasting is not a reliable test at all.

It is to bad that you could spend years learning all the poisonous plants in your area, and still would not know a single food plant.
Or you could learn a few good safe food plants and learn them well enough to start safely with them.

Scatfool,

I had no intention of being offensive, nor did I advise eating any plant without regard. I can't believe that anyone thinks that is what I said. If what you are honestly telling me is that you think I said to go eat any plant regardless of edibility, because it's fun to play "Russian Roulette" as you called it, then I think that what you are trying to tell me is that you are retarded and that you believe that I should take responsibility for the fact you are personal challenged when it comes to reading comprehension.
What I did suggest is another way to proceed with being able to reduce the risk of eating a poisonous plant, if a person is not so interested in learning all the seemingly unrelated poisonous species out there. In mentioning families, I was trying to put things into perspective concerning the otherwise overwhelming number of similar plants, and I believe I did that.
I'm not going to apologize for inadvertantly hurting your feelings or whatever you're crying about me being offensive or insensible or whatever, though; and so if what I wrote has you sharing your negative emotions with me, forget about it. You obviously took my response out of context and did not understand it in many places. I stated quite clearly that my recommended families do include poisonous species; the point is that they are few in number relative to other families.
What I will do, though, is make more of an effort in future posts, to write in a manner more easily understood by the emotionally sensitive who might take insult at the fact that someone else refers to wild edible plants as wild culinaries.

Really, are we serious here??? We are seriously going to argue over freakin' wild edibles???

Sorry, got to go.... the neighbors 3 year old isn't arguing with my cat any more much more interesting ya know.


HOLY CRAP